Daily treat - Helen of Troy necklace

Massive and ornate necklace made from Fine silver and the most beautiful Madagascar blue fire labradorite.

The silver has been oxidized to give it a more antique and magical look.

Wedding Special: Weddings with Flair

The wedding day is the day most women have been dreaming about most of their lives, ever since they were little girls. The excitement of the perfect dress, the butterflies in the stomach when thinking of the upcoming ceremony, they all point to a very special day. And the very special day deserves Very special jewelry. 

If you are looking for very sparkly accessories to complement your perfect dress, whether it’s a necklace or a delicate purse, or bracelet, or a pair of large teardrop shaped earrings, you will find them and much more, in a very special shop, Weddings with Flair.

“I started creating Jewelry back in 2004. (elegancwithflair on Etsy) which is a more casual everyday line of jewelry.

I like bling so I started making things for weddings which seem to fit in just fine.

My work shop is my spare room upstairs in my house which I work in every evening after my full time job of Production supervisor for a advertising agency.” - Louise La Rochelle

“I seem to create designs in my sleep since that really is the only quiet time I have, but I find time on the weekend to be creative non stop.”

Visit Louse's shop here!

Sandra Kemppainen, Louise La Rochelle; photos by Louise La Rochelle

Making a statement: Eva’s Boutique Statement jewelry and more

We are presenting a small shop with unique handmade items: Eva’s Boutique.

Eva, the owner and designer for the shop lives in a historic town in the Western part of Romania, Timisoara. Constantly developing, Timisoara is the city where the already famous and bloody 1989 Revolution to overthrow the communist rule started.

During the long communist rule, where everything was hard to find and life was extremely difficult, her parents started looking for, sometimes repairing and selling beautiful antiques. Being around such unique historical objects have developed a passion for them in Eva and after the revolution, she opened her own boutique in town, selling antiquities for 14 years. Now the shop is rented to other businesses, but some of the small vintage and antique items are available in her online boutique for collectors.

With a strong passion for all that is natural and beautiful, as well as creating clothes and looking for beautiful fabrics, Eva has a huge collection of natural hand dyed silks. 

With the natural silk fabrics, Eva has made many scarves of various sizes and with colorful satin silk fabrics, easy to wear and soft pajamas, for women, as well as for men.

She started with a huge blue turquoise necklace. 

It was the beginning of a constantly growing collection of statement jewelry, combining different stones, colors and shapes into tasteful and stuning pieces.

In the following pages you can get a closer look at some of the designs, compiled from pearls, turquoise, lapis lazuli, natural Baltic amber, jade, moonstone, onyx, agate, coral, genuine Venetian Murano beads and more.

Text: Sandra Kemppainen 

Photography: Eva Rugina, Sandra Rugina

Featured designer: Mia Montgomery - The Moonlight designer from California

MEET MIA MONTGOMERY. 

Her own words, “deep in the night, it’s just the moonlight and me...” suggests a fairy-like world, which you can feel when you see her exquisite designs.

- Tell me about who you are and where you live, about your studies, workshop.

Mia: Thank you for inviting me into your cool new magazine. What a treat to be able to talk a bit about what I adore.

My name is Mia, and I’ve collected beads and various other artistic treasures for ages.

Home is currently Northern California, but I’ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, the gorgeous Pacific Northwest, and a brief stint in the Midwest. My schooling was in interior design, which is the work I do when I’m away from my beading tables. I’ve taken a few technical classes in jewelry design -- soldering, wirewrapping, etc. -- but for the most part I’m self-taught, and definitely inspired by many spectacularly talented artists.

Over time, my home studio has evolved. About a dozen years ago I gave up the pretense of trying to cram a workspace into a tiny back bedroom, and instead took over the entire family room. The space is centered with three enormous wood tables oriented in a U-shape, with lots of shelving along the walls, not to mention many piles of bagged and boxed treasures that I’ve lacked the time to sort and store.

The perimeter of each tabletop is stacked with clear storage boxes, each containing a specific category of beads that I use regularly. One box might contain all seed beads in the orange range, for example, or all small briolettes in the aqua-blue range, or all my brass filigree hearts and flowers, etc.

- How did you discover your passion and get started with it?

I’m told the first signs of trouble surfaced one Sunday morning while in church. We were seated next to a woman wearing sparkly jewelry, and to this day my Mum gets giggly recalling my wide eyes and big toothless grin as I gawked at this poor woman. I was about six months old at the time.

As to the root of the passion, it comes down to this: Every creative move I make is fueled by a lifelong fixation with color and texture, whether the materials are weathered and rustic, or glimmering and fantastical. I’ve explored many art forms, but the satisfaction of creating personal embellishment is tough to beat - the variations are endless, and so are the challenges.

Truth be told, my earliest attempts were not particularly brilliant, but ongoing education, paired with life experience over the years, has helped to refine my sense of what constitutes an intriguing composition.

The art of micro mosaic is also a big passion for me. It’s a stunning craft, with designs ranging from the exquisitely intricate, to more chunky looks. My love of those old pieces eventually inspired me to bring a hint of it into my own work.

My detour into asymmetry was something else altogether, the result of being left with just one beautiful bead, when I needed two to finish the project I had in mind. Throughout the night, I tore the studio apart to find its mate, but to no avail. Finally, just before dawn was breaking, it came to me -- that I could use that single bead as the foundation of a mismatched set. From there it was like a fever -- I fell madly in love with asymmetry as an art form, all its intrigue and complexity. I will always return to that style now.

- Do you have a favorite material you work with? if yes, why?

How does anyone chose?! I can at least rattle off a list: Micro-mosaics, antique brass, matte pearls, rhinestones, Italian buttons, porcelain flowers, crystals and gemstones in muted hues, delicate metal chain (for use as ‘swags’), and. . . grout! Yes, grout.

- How does the place where you live influence your work?

Creativity can be fed by beautiful surroundings, but just as often it can the result of a lack of access to such beauty. I lived for a time in a small town that was devoid of access to the traditional hallmarks of inspiration, like rivers, oceans or mountains. The landscape was flat and bland, the climate unpleasant, and the artist community small in numbers. Ironically, though, it ended up being one of the most artistically prolific periods of my life, the foundation for all the work I have such a passion for now.

In hindsight, I believe the sensory deprivation forced me to be more resourceful, to stretch my imagination. I got into graphic arts, art furniture, interior design, and then beading.

- Can to walk us through how you go about creating one of your Asymmetrical earring sets?

It always begins with one beautiful bead that I decide to build a world around. Sometimes the bead’s pattern or texture suggests a secondary color; other times I have to play with different combinations until I fall in love. This can go on for hours.

I also pull from a large library of inspirations -- color schemes I’ve torn from magazines, the pattern mix in a quilt, the muted hues in antique maps, a sunset over the ocean, or some idea I’ve sketched onto a napkin at Starbuck’s. Mostly I prefer sticking to two main colors as the foundation of any given set, and then vary the depth of those two colors throughout the piece.

An example would be using brick red and vivid turquoise as my foundation colors, then accenting them with pale peach pearls and aqua crystals. Those lighter shades echo the foundational shades, making the set feel more cohesive.

After color, the most important thing to keep in mind is balance. For me, good asymmetrical design is not just a matter of throwing together beads that coordinate, or making one earring rightside-up and the other one upside-down -- to my eyes that is not particularly interesting. Instead, I focus on creating harmony between the two earrings, an interplay, where they complement but do not mirror each other. It helps to spill a wide array of different elements out onto a large tabletop, then let your eyes pass over the chaos for awhile, until you begin to pick out interesting connections. Experiment with scale -- let large elements play off tiny elements -- and find ways to use little accent beads that will tie the two earrings together without getting too matchy-matchy. It’s a very painterly process, actually, with roots in collage. Endlessly challenging, and definitely a labor of love.

- Who is your favorite designer and why?

The late Gianni Versace was first to come to mind. The man was irrepressible in terms of pattern and color, and I still look to images of his Casa Casurina estate in Florida when I need an infusion of pure joy in design. Going further back, Louis Comfort Tiffany for his stained glass, and Maxfield Parrish for his exquisitely vivid paintings. Other present-era favorites include Cheryl Rowley, interior designer for the Kimpton chain of boutique hotels (lots of imaginative color and pattern mixes), and the furniture designs of MacKenzie-Childs. This is a difficult list to abbreviate, let me tell you! I also cannot neglect to mention the impact Disneyland had on my psyche as a little girl. Specifically the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, with all the treasure chests spilling over with jewels and pearls and precious metals, sparkling under artificial moonlight. I about fainted from sheer ecstasy the first time I saw it. Those early impressions remain etched into my brain.

- What dreams do you have for your brand for the future?

I’m not particularly driven in the ‘brand’ sense, and far more interested in simply finding my niche, my audience, so that I can have the luxury of creating jewelry art they will cherish. And of course I would love for this to be my full-time work. At the moment, I spend half of my working life in the interior design field, and the other half beading. It strikes a good balance, but I never seem to get quite enough time with my beautiful beads.

I personally fell in love with Mia’s designs and I believe she has already found her niche. They are original, unique and extremely beautiful.

Text: Sandra Kemppainen

Photos: Mia Montgomery

Mia Montgomery Etsy Shop
Mia Montgomery on Facebook